No Man's Sky In Close Critique [Deep Spoilers]
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- Опубліковано 6 жов 2024
- This is a video critique of No Man's Sky, a procedurally generated science-fiction adventure title. It talks about how difficult it is to cram a whole universe into six gigabytes, and how well the game works mechanically and artistically.
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/ noahcaldwellgervais
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There's a good metaphor for this game in the real-world value of gold. It does not tarnish, it is shiny, it is a lovely colour, and it has some utility in electronics, but we do not value it because of that. We value it because it is RARE.
Nothing in No Man's Sky is RARE. Therefore, nothing has value. It is literally a zero-scarcity simulator.
It's more like fool's gold
Man, 4 years ago you were talking a lot of shit. I wonder if you’re still doing that today
@@idrinkmilk282 No, he wasn't. People can disagree, you know.
@@lillyclarity9699 I’m not talking about his opinion. I’m taking about the fact he’s talking actual shit.like he’s just using a lot of words while saying a lot of nothing.
@@idrinkmilk282 You should let go of the past if you are still butthurt about him talking shit years ago on a fucking UA-cam Comment Section. Talk about moving on....
This is probably the best fair no man',s sky review I've seen
Now if no man's sky was really inspired by 60's Sci-fi where are my bizzare sexual encounter?
They're saving that for the DLC.
Proof or it isn't happening.
Yes, I know it's a joke. But at this point, anything said about NMS absolutely needs to be questioned to the point of obsession.
Maybe if you put the game aside for a while and go outside :D
Please keep your Kirk inside your pants
The main issue people had (and why they called the devs liars) was because the developers promised things that did not end up appearing in the game.
A good example is that multiplayer was promised, and then the dev went back on it closer to release and claimed "no actually it isn't a multiplayer game". Indeed it is possible for two players to meet each other ingame, someone actually did it on a twitch stream. But the player has no model, you just walk into each other. And there's an unfinished player model in the game files.
There was much more like this that was completely left on the cutting room floor. Things that actually would have made the game much more interesting like NPC factions, planets actually orbiting a sun, desert planets, and other things.
To me it's more of a case of the devs selling an idea to the consumer more than selling a game to them. Like as much as I'd like to play a game where I can drive across the entire USA on a DOS computer on a 1.4 megabyte floppy disk, it's going to actually play something like Desert Bus on the Sega Genesis. And I feel like in 10 years similar games in terms of scope will be compared to it in terms of how much variety they might have in terms of content.
Even the people printing the boxed copies thought it had online play and had to print stickers to apply to cover up the logo for online connectivity on the back.
Robin Napoleon I don't see that as being "no different" The developer was also clearly guilty considering on many of the copies of the game they placed a sticker over the section containing multiplayer on the box.
And, it has already occurred. Day one no less on a stream. And it was clearly showing how unfinished such a feature is since the player lacks a player model, and you just walk into each other.
Also, faction wars, different planets different materials, orbits, diverse animals who do things
Slight correction, there was NOTHING to signal to the players that met that they were together, exepct for being able to observe the same objects around them. If one shot a rock, the other did NOT see the result. They saw NOTHING. ANd they could not "walk into each other". They simply did not exist in each others games. The only way players have been able to do anything multiplayer-like, is for 1 player to name something, and then the other player CAN see that discovery.
Bastardo Borracha To me that makes it worse considering how the game advertised multiplayer until right at the last second
I don't really know about this argument.
Sure this math wasn't possible a few decades ago, but in terms of technology that's practically an eternity. Just because it's possible now means it deserves praise, even when it's at its most basic level? You can see the pre-fabrication, and that's not how the most interesting procedural games work. No Man's Sky acknowledging that none of it has a point doesn't feel endearing, it feels like salt in the wounds of the people disappointed in it. It seems like a cop out to say "this is all just a bunch of data anyway, so who really cares?" when you're trying to say it in the most pretentious way possible in a "story" mode that clearly seems like an after-thought. I just don't see the difficulty in cramming an entire universe into six gigabytes when that universe is made up of the same few hundreds of things, thousands maybe.
Where's the logic in comparing it to FTL when they have such different goals? FTL wants to be hard, it wants you to get thrill from conquering it, not discovering everything. The discoveries in FTL are great, but they're all just means to an end of taking down the Rebel (Federation? Don't remember, been a while) ship. It wants you to discover for the sake of progress, No Man's Sky wants you to discover for the sake of discovery but doesn't put enough forward for that to be enticing.
Yes, I agree completely. I have not played the game, well because what it seems to be lacking (everything it was sold on).
I like most of his reviews, but some, like this or like Fallout4(althoug that one not that much), it feels like he is trying to give meaning to things that are not meaningful.
This review sounds like he is trying to justify to himself, why he is liking the game.
also the whole math argument would be much stronger on a game like the original elite, or elite2, but not on this. not after there are so many procedural games there are already. and they all work the same, as u already pointed out.
genkispt I felt the same way while watching it. I almost stopped before finishing the video to write my comment because I knew how the rest of the video would go.
I normally like this channel's reviews as well, I came from the Fallout 4 review, but this one seems very self serving. It's perfectly fine to like the game, but it's kind of shitty and pretentious to call people who feel burned spending $60 ignorant by reading them passages from Lewis and Clark's diaries.
Agreed, FTL's goals are so different as to be incomparable. Minecraft is a better comparison, since it has exploration and random generation, but the meat and potatoes players keep returning for is the building (and sharing it with others). Why name every fern or squirrel in a hundred star systems if no one will ever see them?
Being a casual exploration game is fine as long as there is staggering variety, but I think it needs distractions. Elite: Dangerous has weathered similar complaints that the procedural bits aren't diverse enough; the real draws are combat, player interaction, and sweeping time lapses on UA-cam.
Meanwhile, I'm not convinced that players want worlds they can crash on and be stranded. More variety in terrain would help, but the point is to bask in awe, not stew in frustration. Maybe an element of danger would be exciting, but it's not the only way to give players challenges that aren't rooted in collecting a million space rocks for the privilege of collecting more rocks.
Make of my thoughts and counterpoints whatever you will. I think you're a wonderful human being, and that your comment deserves the hours I put into tapping the following wall-o-text out on my phone:
I disagree that Minecraft would have been a better comparison.
Minecraft is at bare minimum the size of one planet in NMS, which severely limits its size in comparison to NMS. Because Minecraft is much smaller, the game uses its math in very different ways from how NMS uses it. Think about it: let's say you somehow make a mod that allows players to craft spaceships that will allow players to traverse a void between different Minecraft world seeds, with zero "loading screens" in the transition. Then, Minecraft would be a more important comparison to NMS, but that isn't reality.
You could say terrain generation would be where the comparison is made, but every world in NMS generates a visually unique planet every time: trees might look like a massive root-bound tumor, hostile animals could be anything from massive horned beasts to tiny alien bugs, even rock formations and boulders are visually unique between planets. In Minecraft, a Creeper is always a Creeper, a Spider is always a Spider, Villagers are always Villagers, almost everything is cube-shaped, and trees will always be trees. Even if you could traverse Minecraft world seeds as smoothly as NMS lets you traverse its system seeds, every world seed would be painfully identical to the other, far more so than with NMS.
Also, Minecraft's smaller size and far more detailed world encourage the player to completely take it over, to carve a home out of the wilderness, which is a very different gameplay experience from the nomadism NMS encourages its players to do. NMS nudges its players to move on to the next planet once you're tired of exploring a particular planet, which means the game doesn't let you carve out a home from the wilderness the same way Minecraft does.
Since the scope and goals of the two games are very different (Minecraft is small and encourages each player to make their world seed their own, while NMS is huge and encourages each player to move on from each system seed and forever be traveling), value judgments by comparing them are not very useful, as why people buy and enjoy Minecraft would naturally be very different from why people buy and enjoy NMS, despite both of them using some form of math (random generation) to create the game world.
FTL, on the other hand, also encourages and sometimes outright forces you to move from system to system, with the Rebel Fleet constantly on your tail and having to be one step ahead of them to win each run. You could argue that the comparison to NMS Noah makes in this video has the same problems as the comparison with Minecraft, but again I would disagree. FTL's constant urging of the player to keep moving forward creates a drive in the player to keep moving, keep fueled, keep upgrading, and stay alive, much like in NMS. The difference between the games is obvious, though: FTL is a brutal, uncompromising challenge that puts the player's skill, crew and equipment to the test at every random encounter, while NMS is a gentle, meditative exploration of a universe-in-a-bottle that strives for visual wonder and awe at the scope of the game's world.
Both accomplish the same goals: keep the player moving and progressing through the game world and its systems; but they do so using different mechanics and different forms of math. That's very useful for consumers wondering why they should pick up FTL or NMS over the other, as they are both nomadic procedurally-generated space adventures, and understanding where they are different would help folks decide which they would rather buy.
As for the "story" not actually being that impressive, Noah brought up that pulp science fiction of the 1950s and 1960s has the same problem: it over-emphasizes the science and the scale of the universe way over anything resembling a decent narrative or character development. It asks the questions of "how and why does the universe work the way it works? What would it look like? How would you live that way?" None of that has anything to do with humanity's desire to conquer, to leave their stamp on the world. In fact, many classic science fiction stories are about the hubris of humanity trying to bend nature to its will, and showing the consequences of those desires. The "story" doesn't matter in pulp sci-fi: the science matters, the "big picture" matters.
I think the audience expected something like the Star Wars universe out of NMS, where the narrative is king and every player goes through some form of the Hero's Journey. Instead of that, they got the science fiction equivalent of Euro Truck Simulator, without the trucking-as-a-job part. Then again, isn't that filling a niche that the market is sorely lacking in? We already have a massive space opera trilogy where our choices matter: it's called Mass Effect. We already have a galaxy-wide economy simulation: it's called Eve Online. We already have hardcore space sims in development that put you right in the pilot's seat: they are called Star Citizen and Elite: Dangerous. To have a game where you are a nomadic wanderer in an impossibly vast universe whose only goal is whatever sights and sounds the players decide to go see is something the market hasn't brought to consumers yet. At least, not until NMS came out.
Also, if it were only a few thousands of things that are pieced together to create the flora and fauna, there would be much less variety in NMS's planets. The thing is, I've checked out screenshots people have made of the planets they have found, and I have seen things I haven't seen in game. That was after exploring eight planets and cataloging all the species on them. Having only a few thousand parts to create that variety would result in players seeing those same parts over and over again across the different planets, meaning screenshots would bleed together after a while: nobody would be seeing new body parts or plant life after a few planets. Clearly, that isn't the case. Not only that, but after looking at those screenshots, I found a planet that had flora and fauna with still new body types and shapes. Sure, repetition can happen, but the pool is wider than you may think. And of course, a wider pool means more stuff to "cram in", making the smaller file size that much more impressive. Plus, even with a "smaller" pool of "only a few thousand parts", where does the game store the 18 quintillion body part combinations?
I can understand each planet 'feeling' the same, as animal types are similar across planets: carnivores are carnivores, grazers are grazers, so on and so forth. The visual variety is what makes each planet interesting though, much the same way that the clothes you wear are what help you stand out from literally every other human being around you. To poo-poo visual diversity is equivalent to poo-pooing the artistry of dresses, suits and costumes. We're all humans underneath our clothes, but without clothes and the art of making visually and aesthetically pleasing clothing, we would be more likely to lose ourselves in those masses of humanity, and find it that much harder to distinguish ourselves from our fellow human beings. It's the same difference with NMSs visual artistry: the window-dressing IS the point, NOT the underlying functions.
Last but certainly not least, if I remember the anecdotes correctly, many games industry figures have come out over the years and said a series of fairly similar comments about creating a vast space universe that players fly through in real-time: "It's too big to create and be playable." "We don't have the technology to pull it off." "It would take too long to hand-craft, and procedural generation would create laughable results." "The game size would be massive." NMS, in six gigabytes, proves all of that industry-speak flat-out wrong. We CAN create a huge, procedurally-generated universe that is functional to the point of playability that doesn't produce results so outlandish that laughter is the only appropriate response, all within a reasonable file size. Now there is no excuse to not double down and really expand the space sim and space exploration genres. Devs, NMS showed you the possibilities; now you better damn well run with them.
Make of my thoughts and counterpoints whatever you will.
It's fascinating to hear critiques of No Man's Sky from the time it launched considering how literally everything about it changed so radically since.
Yeah it's weird to see how much everything has changed, even with the UI and graphics. Same with how people look at the game now
What I love about Noah's content is that he often gives creators a lot of credit for the idea and effort.
You said you don't get why people accuse Hello Games of lying. But seriously, what's not to get? There are missing crucial features, which were promised right before the release. If Sean Murray says there is possibility of meeting other players, and there isn't, then it's false advertising. It's as simple as that, and the game wasn't sold solely as a "universe in a bottle". It was supposed to offer a multiplayer experience, possibility to join factions and take up jobs. The flight model is different than the one they showed in commercials. The game looks worse...
I agree with you up until this part, "...multiplayer experience". He mostly meant the whole naming animals, planets, etc and having other people visit and see all the shit you discovered. As far as playing with other people it was 'supposed' to be barebones. You could see other players if they're near you but that's pretty much it.
GRStudios360 I mean his often repeated words (spoken numerous times, i.e. at Conan O'Brien's, or wherever he showed the game) how players could find each other, it would just be really hard. I remember how he said it would make you think twice about attacking other people, as such encounters would be priceless. How it was meant to show you how rare and wonderful is the existence of life. I also remember how 1 in 10 planets would have any life 1 in 1000 complex lifeforms, and 1 in 10000 a civilization (number could differ). Nope, nothing like it in the final game. Murray never addressed it after release.
"You said you don't get why people accuse Hello Games of lying. But seriously, what's not to get?"
A lie is an intentional misstatement. The developers told us what they were working on, and some of those features had to be cut before launch. Any reasonable person who's not in kindergarten and who knows anything about video game development knows that sometimes features have to be cut before launch due to QA issues or deadlines. To say that it's a "lie" for a developer to say that certain features will be in the game when they only "intend" that such features will be in the game is like saying that I'm lying if I tell my wife I'm making steak for dinner and when I go to the fridge I find the steak is past its sell by date so I can't make steak. Did I "lie" when I told her I was making steak? Of course not! I'm not fricken prescient - I can't see into the future. Neither can Sean Murray.
"If Sean Murray says there is possibility of meeting other players, and there isn't, then it's false advertising. It's as simple as that"
Maybe in fricken Fairyland. Here in the real world, grownups understand that when a developer talks about features before launch, he's talking about things he intends to put in the game. Everyone who isn't a child knows that what a developer intends to put in the game is subject to change. That's why developer statements are NOT considered advertising.
You misspelled your nickname. It should be "No Man's Sky Apologist".
Not to mention the lack of space battles and giant creatures that were SHOWN IN TRAILERS.
I have such a love hate relationship with this game and this video brilliantly explained my feelings about it. On one hand my inner paper back 70's scifi frontiersman nerd is geeking out over the vastness of the galaxy and my smallness in it where as my inner gamer is continually frustrated by the casualized/homogenized mechanics that turn the game into a bore. Great video as always, sincerely a fellow patreon supporter: Sasha.
Such a painfully lacking game. I've put in 68 hours and just reached the last Atlas. I didn't manage to get 10 stones, not sure why or how I missed 4. It was such a disappointment. I can see so much potential in the game, it's just a skeletal frame for a better game.
You played a game for 68 hours and yet call it lacking?
reviews like this should be changed to just "I dont know what I want"
There's more to satisfaction then just play time.
Definitely agree. It's just rare that I encounter a game so full of potential yet lacking. the core game loop is not nearly as interesting as the concept behind it.
The Monarch tps?
I think it might have been pertinent to have mentioned Minecraft in the video because it did a lot of what makes no mans sky amazing (near infinite scale, procedurally generated art, etc) and it was also a good game in and of itself all several years before No Mans Sky.
And the thing is, Minecraft has some actual GOALS. Even without the blatant ones like beating the bosses, simply creating buildings, creating safe spaces for night and claiming turf from nature is alot more engaging. You can explore for the sake of exploring, but that's not the only reason you'd want to.
Minecraft is much more boring in terms of procedural generation, though. Or at least it was when it first started gaining momentum online. The extra biomes, the "silly" biomes, the special enemies and the terrain generation customization came after. It wasn't its strong suit at all.
So why was Minecraft more satisfying that NMS, even playing as single player? In my opinion, it's because it had both customization, challenge, and progression. I don't think I need to repeat what the video says, but basically, Minecraft lets you customize your avatar and your world aesthetically and functionally. In early stages of the game, it is genuinely challenging. It lets you get lost, and lose your gear, forces you to start over for small mistakes. Yet instead of creating frustration, it makes players want to get better, to try again.
Both games sound very close in terms of features, but they focus on entirely different aspects of play.
In terms of comparison, contemplative walking sims like Dear Esther or even some of the Myst games have much more in common with NSM than Minecraft, Starbound or Terraria.
Selestrielle Depending on at what point you consider Minecraft was gaining considerable momentum it still had very interesting procedural generation. You could walk around a peaceful world during the day of rolling grasslands and hills. During the night you could explore extensive sets of interconnected caves.
It wasn't as expansive or intricate as NMS, but as I said, I think Noah might have drawn an interesting connection with Minecraft because it's clearly a major influence on NMS and was successful in a lot of the ways NMS isn't even when NMS tries to.
Random generation is nothing impressive, PC games (particularly RPG's) experimented with it from the 80's right up to the middle of the 90's. And it got abandoned because there's no point in the Player having a massive area to play in if that area is all totally bland.
I would not say that's fully true.
I would say it got abandoned because randomly generated 3D spaces have a problem with collision, allowing players to accidentally fall through the floor
Still, games like Deus Ex, Thief 1 & 2, The Elder Scrolls (except Oblivion), the good Ultima games, the "Shock" series (except Infinite), the Fallout games and Bioware's old D&D based RPG's encourage exploration by dropping the player in a handcrafted environment full of interesting details and rewarding gameplay.
Procedural generation is great at creating vest spaces for the player to inhabit, it's not good at actually making those environments interesting. So there's an inherent problem with creating a game based solely on exploration, and then setting it in an almost entirely Procedurally generated world, the sense of wonder and excitement the player initially feels at the scope of the game is going to quickly evaporate once he or she realizes that every planet is created based on a formula that can only spit out variations on a theme.
"And it got abandoned"
Half of the games coming out nowadays have some kind of random generation in them :/
I deliberately excluded Civilization, Elite, roguelikes and diablo, because none of them focus on exploration. Civilization is a 4X, Elite was a space combat game with trading elements, roguelikes are about planning, resource management and (in the case of nethack at least) macgyvering innovative solutions. Diablo is a hack and slash game. As for your opinion of the Elder Scrolls, that's your personal opinion of a game, they're a widely respected series and yes, most people would consider them "good".
Daggerfall was alright, and Morrowind was good.
My problem with this, is that you're giving it the grandeur and wonderment of galaxy and space when at its core, it's what you said, math. pretty much every game ever made is just strings of code and numbers. it's procedural generation with a coat of space paint and pretty music.
you can have 17 quinbillion cardboard boxes but if they're all being made from 20 different styles of box then you're just repeating the same thing indefinitely. not to mention how that's more than anyone will even see in a lifetime, which in real space is captivating but as a video game it just renders itself pointless.
you can't knock people for wanting to pick up a game and enjoy it. some people like a quick twitch shooter like cod, or tuning out cars in racing games, endlessly doing menial tasks in skyrim lol... we're all "couch dwellers".
you see wonder and excitement in this game and that's cool. some people don't. I agree the hatred towards the devs is childish and undeserved but we live in the generation of outrage. people get offended and oppressed by everything from bathrooms to applause. people are shit haha.
+mechbgum you assume so it's your fault PERIOD
+mechbgum you're a fool for making assumptions. It's you. I hope you bought the game. Serves you right. And if you think you're right, just try to sue them. Go on little man. You'll discover how the REAL WORLD OF GROWNUPS works.
+mechbgum people in Nazi Germany assumed that indeed Jews were a problem to be gotten rid of. They assumed their leaders were good and responsible in their own bubble. Now ponder on that boy.
+mechbgum And again you assume on. I'm actually Jewish and you seem to have trouble comprehending the context of my reply. You shy away from the subject through your assumptions.
+mechbgum triggered much? Calling me a latent fascist doesn't work on a Jew. You ignore history little bumboy. You assume...and still don't get it. Nazi's assumed a lot too. That's you sheeple's problem. You're so gullable. You would buy medicine from a quack doctor in the 1880's.
This game is shallow. The developers promised a lot more, and implied a lot more in their trailers. The argument it has to be shallow is BS. We have procedural games already like minecraft that do it well. It's overhyped garbage that wasn't even close to done.
Oh boy! Noah! You look so good with mustache!
Probably the most interesting approach to a game review I've seen in a while. I enjoyed this kind of analysis
Post foundation update I was finding myself much more motivated by elements implemented. As an experience beginning the survivor mode, I found myself absolutely struggling to stay alive from the get go, having to restart entirely from scratch 3 or 4 times in only a matter of minutes, as everytime you die, you begin again with a bit less health, so eventually you find yourself in an inescapable causality loop of dying. Eventually however I crawled out of the primordial state of brutality imposed on the player by desperately and cleverly using every ounce of my life support to fight my way out of the situation. It was thrilling to have the game smack me around right off the bat and let me know its not screwing around.
Afterwards it became a question of not just getting off the planet and carrying on, as the base building, and subsequent stations and alien employees you personally hire giving tasks in order to build new tech created a role playing narrative I could get behind. I don't need No Mans Sky to give me a story, I want it to allow me the tools to role play my own story weaved into it's world. So far that is working excellently. Building a tower and populating it floor to floor with flora to harvest and profit from is surprisingly rewarding in a universe otherwise static in resource states, awaiting the players mine beam to extract. Even having said that, the planets no longer seem to ALL have equal parts of resources. The first planet was a barren wasteland intent on killing me in a matter of minutes. While the planet I decided to set up my base on has an alarming amount of Emeral scattered throughout the landscape in heaping quantities, as well as a population of wild life so dense it actually brings the framerate down when there appear to be 40+ creatures on screen at once. And I have never seen such a populated world since or before. Variety!! So while I could have set up a base on any planet, it felt meaningful to do so on that one. It's these mechanics that create a more potent juxtaposition which allow for a sense of range in the games universe and thus expanding a sense of choice and self autonomy, especially in survival mode where any decisions made early on are often life or death. That is until you work your way up, build a base, establish your work force, and eventually find yourself in a much less precarious situation than had been initially presented. It's precisely because of this range in the experience that I feel accomplished in every stage as both stand alone moments and on the whole. Excellent! I am about 7 million dollars in simply profiting from my flora farm, and have to reach 15 million for a freighter. I feel at that moment once i do get a freighter I will be presented with less of a goal, but the simulation presents itself in all these ways i have described non the less. One complaint I do have is once you are done with say the weapons expert in all the upgrades they can develop, thats it, even if you hire another weapons expert, they say hey you've already upgraded everything, have a nice day, this makes hiring new employees completely pointless. I would have liked to have seen certain aliens that know certain things, so as to motivate the player to sift through different aliens and see what they can or can't do. but oh well.
So while the foundation update certainly has shaken things up in a very welcome way, the game needs more of this type of variety and functionality. I am much more hopeful for the game now than i was at launch.
I do see where you're coming from in this review. No Man's Sky would've been great if it had been a 20 dollar indie darling, but it isn't. It's a full-priced AAA game with an entire extra game's worth of features that were alluded to and directly promised. But there's a kernel of wonder and amazement in there. I get that. However, Dwarf Fortress is a game that does basically everything that No Man's Sky does but infinitely better and with more mechanical depth all at the low-low price of totally free.
I like how you named the player character after Taft.
Holy shit, that mustache makes you look like a firefighter.
this is hands down the most thought out and practical review of the game i have seen. to be honest, I could listen to you talk about anything. Amazing review man. you have a new sub.
He's pretty unique among game reviewers, I myself could listen to him talk about anything. He has a 1 hour and 40 minute video talking about a 4,000 mile road trip he embarked on in a 70's Mercury Marquis and it's surprisingly entertaining. The video is underrated as hell, check it out when you have the time.
will do!
Okay, but did you see the Angry Joe Show review? He and others have demonstrated point-by-point how they showed off a Colonial Marines style fake build? So how can you say you don't get the outrage?
fake build and he got on public outlets and LIED STRAIGHT TO EVERYONE ABOUT WHAT WILL BE IN THE GAME. Fuck this guy..
A very well written review, thanks. I appreciate your thoughtful assessment of NMS. To start with I loved this game and spent much time on the first planet being wowed. By the third planet however, the monotony of the game was laid bare and those moments of real hazard against the Sentinels and hostile spacecraft are ruining by the terrible combat controls. Funnily, I found FTL a joy to play because even as my crew died, their ship gutted by fire, I knew that I had reached that point fully in control and through my own decisions.
I've watched this twice now, Noah - as always, appreciate the insight and the willingness to look at a game as something more than a product to be consumed.
I thought it last night, and it stuck with me today - No Man's Sky is an expression of infinity. It's not actually infinite, but it makes the attempt to express the idea of it. Infinity isn't always exciting - sometimes it's vast, sometimes beautiful, sometimes terrifying, and often tedious, often boring, often repetitive. I think that No Man's Sky is a success in this sense, as an expression of the infinite possibilities of the universe. Still flawed and limited in execution, but something new and daring nonetheless.
It's 2018 and the game has changed drastically from launch. Creative and survival modes solve a lot of the issues brought up in this video, there's also a huge amount of story better planet generation with empty systems, dead planets etc. It's worth checking out and re-reviewing
What other gamer quotes Lewis and Clark? I'm running out of compliments, Noah.
Please carry on. I hope you're doing fine, man. Cheers from Brasil!
Thanks for the song at the beginning of the video, it's in my favorites list now.
edit: you were twice happy about the choice of song. the johnny cash part paints a perfect picture of the starfaring gameplay. but also about the reincarnation of the singer on the many men he tells about in the song, which seems to be a motif also in the game as you said. excellent, noah.
I cannot BELIEVE the amount of work that goes into these videos. You are one of the most well-studied game critics I have EVER had the pleasure of listening to. Keep up the amazing work!
noah you're the best part of my day every day you release something. you're so spot on on this critique. also loved the baldur's gate video. thank you!
I’d love to see an updated version with all the new stuff that’s been added via Updates.
Nothing has fundamentally changed. The gameplay is still gimping the art/discovery aspect of it. Just because you can play with other people and drive cars, does not change any of that. Nothing he said in this video will change with the new patches. It's just more gameplay fluff. We still can't find gold mountain.
Love your video's man! One of the best written video essay series on youtube
What a great review and accurate analysis of the game. My frontal cortex took everything in and i am now sitting here perpetually satisfied. Well done sir.
I love your cadence and the way you read your script. I can hear how much thought you’ve put into your words and how they genuinely reflect how you feel.
So exploration is about walking aimlessly over procedurally generated samey terrain with no unique landmarks and finding the exact same building over and over again no matter where you go? I'm quite sure that's not what Lewis and Clark experienced during their expedition. Not to mention, exploring one continent and 18 bazingallions of alien planets are quite different things.
Your excuses for this game's shortcomings leave an impression that you've never played games that use procedural generation in any way, which is strange because it's obvious you have a good experience with PC games during 90s. Using equations to slap a world together is hardly a new thing in gaming, neither it's done in NMS on the scale that has never been achieved before, or better. See Space Engine.
You should turn these into Podcasts so i can listen to them in the car
That log from the Lewis & Clark expedition is way more interesting than anything in No Man's Sky, because throughout it's making educated guesses on the natural history of the area, its geology and the movement of wind and water over millennia, and commenting on differences in the land that matter not only to their efforts to record it but to their ability to survive it. No Man's Sky has none of this. Its terrain, flora, and fauna aren't the product of a simulated history that lets you make helpful inferences. They're random recolors within an extremely limited range and no connection to each other.
I'd love to see an update post Foundation Update. It seems like they addressed almost everything that you mentioned
The fact they literally had to put a sticker over the "multiplayer" portion of the box should say all that needs to be said
Hi Noah, new sub here. Love your stuff! Keep it up!
I really appreciate your elaborate thoughts on games, that makes your channel really stand out. subscribed and looking forward to more.
Near infinite procedurally generated worlds really aren't that impressive, and for me it's not nearly enough to save the game.
Especially since the random generation is really obvious after a short amount of time.
You can make millions of unique planets by just placing a few objects in different spots everytime.
But that doesn't really make for an interesting universe.
Secondly is the fact the gameplay is really just frustrating and not fun or interesting or relaxing or engaging in any way.
Ofcourse it doesn't help that the game barely works either.
But one of the worst things is that the game just doesn't look good. The shader sucks ass a lot of the texture are very low res.
And ofcourse minecraft did it better years ago.
It's interesting to note that minecraft solved the issue of intraversable terrain being generated by allowing the player to mine and place nearly any block.
where no mans sky just changes the random generation to make everything traversable which makes the generation much less interesting.
well done! Your oration of the systole and diastole of the deficiency of this title sums this up so distinctively. I personally have been enthralled in the game play and look forward to my continued amazement of the seemingly uncharted worlds at hand.
I don't always agree with you, but you are hands down the best video game commentator on UA-cam. Keep it up!
the first 20 seconds of this set such a good tone for the rest of the video. this was my first time watching one of your videos and you pretty much had me at hello with that opening tableau.
Am I crazy or is nobody trying to notice that every pebble are in pairs?
That was one of the first things I noticed about this game's visuals, and it baffles me that it hasn't been fixed.
*****
See, that username was originally a Team Fortress 2 reference, but I'm totally okay with it becoming a Bloodborne reference instead now that TF2 is Hat Simulator.
"Their heads full of eyeballs" is a quote from "Meet the Demoman".
Stranger in a Strange Land, one of the greater sci-fi novels of the 60s. So glad the hollywood machine hasn't shat all over that one yet.
4:17 I actually expected that NMS has this feel of FTL - some goal to achieve.
6:30 a missed opportunity - they could use alien languages of existing foreign languages and players could learn useful words of a foreign language that they could use in everyday life.
Still I think it is not game enough. Games have some goal. If the goal is exploration, all exploration happened on Earth had huge impact on present old world. In that regard it is not sandbox enough, it is not narrated enough, it is not inspired enough for majority of gamers (if it was they wouldn't refund game so much to the point where on Steam Spore from 2008 has more players than NMS).
They said more than delivering universe in the bottle. They were promising much much more. In that regard - the lied very very much.
Great video! Best review so far, you go through so many ideas and concepts both about the game and how it was recieved. However, it's obvious at this point that they lied about features. I don't, but it's obvious why people hate the game.
oh wow. i hadn't heard that song you opened with for maybe a decade. brings me back
Thank you, Noah. This, to me is you at your best. I can't express how much I appreciate this way of yours: You take a game and you love it. It is a form of art to love something, to be learned and mastered. I think you might have done it.
It is with deep regret I have to put this video off until after work tomorrow. Thanks for multiple vids this month man! Considering the depth of your commentary, it's impressive you are putting content out this fast!
Your points at 15:30 - 18:00 hit the nail on the head with regards to the game's main problem. While we could argue all year whether this game should've been priced at $15 or $60, the problem with the game's "exploration" is that, for all its procedurally generated quantity, there's not much quality, or perhaps *variety* is the appropriate term.
Everything on each planet basically looks and functions the same as most every other planet. If the developers had embraced the extreme end of their randomized mapmaking, as you pointed out, they would have embraced what made their project truly unique, and wouldn't have had to apologize for anything.
I think that they could have hit a compromise where there was always at least on planet in every star system that was habitable but lacked resources, and a whole bunch of them that had various environmental hazards that you had to wear the right gear for which held increasingly rare resources. You would find that you always crash landed on a habitable planet so that the game would let you opt out of the survival aspect completely. You would then be guaranteed to find all that you needed in the way of materials, debris, wrecks and objects amongst the planets and moons of your current star system to journey to the next star system.
I also think that Sentinels should only occur in star systems that have fauna, but that there should be no signs of alien civilisation on the planets as these robots would destroy any race attempting to colonise their nature preserves.
I also think that Pirates should only occur near Space Stations and that Space Stations should be far more rare and harder to discover the location of. This could work by first finding a star system that had no alien fauna and therefore no Sentinels preventing colonisation. You could then find that a single alien race had taken territorial control of this. Although this would be rare and you wouldn't encounter any alien NPCs until you had travelled about halfway to the centre of the initial Galaxy. Some of these bases would be just outposts, others unoccupied mining complexes and factories, there would also be the odd abandoned research facility with a horror slant to whatever had broken out of quarantine whilst it was being studied, there would be multi-platform trading posts taking multiple ships, as well as the new addition of something the scale of a small space port (think Mos Eisley from Star Wars: Episode IV) which had a Cantina bar in which you would find a variety of aliens who didn't belong to any of the rival factions from whom you could get jobs as a trader using a loaned vessel, or a bounty hunter with your own, as well as discover the trade routes that interconnected local Space Stations and which ones had the most Police (both making them a good destination for legitimate trade, but simultaneously a bad one for illegal goods), and those which had none at which contraband and Piracy florished - basically, the same as Elite (1984). You would also be told of regions afflicted by the erupting Interstellar War so that you could choose to avoid these star systems as you charted your way to the centre, unless your ship was sufficiently upgraded for you to side with a faction as a paid mercenary.
I would like to see some procedurally generated narrative come from an RTS game simulating on their server that online players could sway the results of. There would be no need for PvP multiplayer, just a recognition by the central server that your assistance of some bots in one faction help it keep territory, conquer some, or lose it.
Ships should have different control schemes, if not different performance characteristics from ship to ship, giving more of a reason to change ship than a few extra slots. I also don't see why equipment can't be transferred across. The Fighter ship would Pitch & Roll on the Left Stick rather than Pitch & Roll as the Trader ship controls at the moment. You would start off with a Trader ship and then have the option to swap to a Fighter that would be unique in not having an autopilot enabled that prevented it from flying down canyons under rocky arches and slamming into the ground at high speed.
People complain about missing features, but the game would be better with more missing features, as it doesn't help immersion to have a waypoint to the location of your ship (losing and finding it again would be an adventure that it is not allowing players to have), or to all the points of interest on the map (so there is no stumbling on an ancient ruin or cryptic monolith as its location is clearly marked from hundreds of miles away), or even to mark the location of mineral resources and what they each are (this should be a mystery until you dematerialise the rock into its constituent elements into your Exosuit whose menu would gain a complete Periodic Table for you to fill up this freeing up the limited Inventory slots for upgrades and crafted item storage tradeoffs). You also shouldn't have a Grave at which to collect your dropped Inventory, or Respawn unless you have made a copy of your Traveller in the pattern buffer of a Space Station's rented teleporter. You don't need to muck around with a Pulse Drive if you can fly faster and faster and faster through frictionless void and the whole pace of the game should have planet to moon transitions that are more akin to that seen in the E3 2014 "Dinosaur Planet" trailer.
I guess all this grind was intended to stop players rushing through planets like a slideshow and getting jaded fast as they began to compare a lot of them in their recent memory and start to see recurrent patterns ruin the illusion of it being "something entirely new that they had never seen before" and merely "something that was entirely expected to be similar to something seen not long enough before for them to have forgotten about it". However, they used the wrong brake. Optional preparatory grind in order to mount an intrepid exploration of a hazardous planet for rare minerals, wrecks, ruins, etc. is a well understood and justified "risk versus reward" gameplay mechanic that it doesn't fully commit to. However, because this necessarily has to remain an optional survival aspect in order for it to succeed as an exploration game it has to have another pervasive brake slowing rapid progress to the centre. As the Nada and Polo subplot undermines all value in your achievements by the revelation that this Universe is fake and nothing you did really mattered, that has to be cut and Black Holes have to become dangerous singularities which destroy your ship once pulled past their event horizon rather than wormholes inside which you can chat to two NPCs. This immediately makes getting to the centre far harder especially as you only live once. To balance this it will now pause the game when in the menu (and allow you to arbitrarily overwrite a single save point on exiting from which it will later resume) so the inefficient menu system never causes an unfair death. However, piracy will inhibit trade and the interstellar factional war happening much closer to the centre of the Galaxy will inhibit safe movement towards the end of your journey. Unless you trade to get the funds to upgrade your ship to then align with a faction so you may gain safe passage through their territories you won't get to the centre to get your name memoralised on the leaderboard of all those who managed it in order of who got there first and in the quickest time, etc. More could await you there but that would require the reinstatement of their cut multiplayer.
Great review. Keep up the good work.
This is phenomenal
Each statement is a perfect concoction of emotions and facts that completely encapsulate the ironies between expectation and reality
You are muse
Thank you
Just found your videos and I love them! I hope you get more subscribers for this indepth work and caring detail you put into videos
That monologue at 28:00 is brilliant :)
You claim that exploration and relaxation can't really go together, mind backing up that claim with something better than comparing the procedurally generated world of No Man's Sky to FTL out of all the games that are procedurally generated? Those games both strive to achieve different things. I have played FTL and combines exploration, tactics and combat. It puts a pressure on a player because it wasn't designed around discovering things first and foremost. You talk about complex ideas, but you don't really explain them in a satisfying manner.
Exploration is about the unknown. The unknown causes tension. Relaxation comes from comfort. Comfort comes from the familiar. Not universally but you need to work to get past those opposites. Sorry I’m 4 years late.
You've sold me on a No Man's Sky without all the game-y survival stuff and just have all the exploration stuff. That's kind of why I love Abzu. Don't have to worry about resources or dying. It's just about exploring the deep sea, seeing the pretty sights, come across interesting creatures, ride them, ride with them, and be along for the ride of a linear story that's simple but poignant enough.
I have to echo the view of other commentators that while I don't always agree with Noah, this has to be one of the best gaming-related channels on UA-cam. Great work.
Hey Noah do you have any experience with Spiderweb Software games? Avadon, Avalon, etc. Love playing those games and listening to vinyl so I was thinking about your stuff.
I really appreciate your analysis and poetic phrasing.
There was a game released long before No Man's Sky that tried something very similar in concept. It was called Elite.
Elite released on 8 bit home computers, all of the graphics were vector based, and the entire game fit on floppy disks. A huge amount of the content was generated using the Fibonnaci sequence.
However something Elite did was it also pioneered different concepts that it's much more well known for. Such as its open ended sandbox structure, the ability to play the game solely as a trader, a pirate, and even just mining asteroids. The game attempted to create a universe in a bottle, and it made it much more believable using 8 bit graphics. No Man's Sky is fully in 3D and it's less believable than a game of a similar scope released 30 years earlier.
Even games based on Elite, like Wing Commander Privateer and Freelancer were fully aware of the huge limitations of basing all of your content on randomly generated algorithms. It's why both games were much more story based and had a greater focus on mission structure, at the cost of losing this universe simulation. And both games are still very beloved and regularly played to this day, despite not being authentic.
I think one key thing to take from a lot of it is that authenticity isn't valued as much as a clever illusion is. People typically value a game that tricks them into thinking it's never ending, rather than a game that is actually never ending. It's something that's repeated through all forms of art, where implying something rather than actually showing it is far more powerful.
To use an example. I remember when I was very young I thought outside the gate of Lara Croft's house in Tomb Raider 2, existed another world. And that if I could somehow escape out of the gate I'd be able to explore it. Naturally as an adult who is cynical and aware of how the game's engine functions, I'm aware it's just a backdrop and the world just physically ends. But to me a game is more special when it fools me like that. When a game reminds me "you're just playing a video game right now" I inherently take it less seriously and value the experience less. It's like if the Mona Lisa had a speech bubble that said "You're just looking at 400 year old dried oil spread on a canvas right now. None of this really matters".
well i would also assume elite dangerous is able enough... was almsot a bit sad he didnt mention it-but t makes sense because, nms is like.. trippy pulp like people pissed drunk talking about philosopical bullshit 3am at night.. interesting but inconsequential
omfg I just realize I got a new pc and now I can run that game. brb installing it XD
Thanks for your great video essays, Noah.
best review on this game ive heard! i personally love this game and i hope there is secrets that we have yet to find....
Informative, refreshing, erudite, honest in its analysis, helpful to those deciding if they should bother playing (paying) and ultimately entertaining.
Thank you for posting, sincerely.
This is an excellent review. Thank you for this!
By far the most objective and thorough review of No Man's Sky's problems. Well done.
despite the devs "rounding off all the sharp edges" i learned on my first attempt to play the game that it can be quite hostile since it started me on a planet with 130 degree weather and few resources in my immediate vicinity. it was an unfriendly tutorial. lol
Amazing analysis! Thanks for this. It's so wide-ranging and covers so many aspects of the game, its inspirations, its place within gaming as well as art, history, and science fiction; and yet it's still coherent as a game review, albeit an atypical one. Though in this case, that's a good thing. Well done, sir!
Great stuff man. Keep it coming whenever you have the time, energy, and capacity to. We'll be here.
Interloper from twentysided stopping by to say that was beautiful.
Also the inclusion of a Sony Hi-Fi at the beginning was brilliant.
I was hoping you'd do a video on this game, it's a really interesting one. Nicely done!
Well, once again a very interesting review. Learned something about the game itself, about gaming in general, and a bit about the older science fiction I grew up with. Thanks.
Thanks for going into this. Corny as it is, "The Cosmic Computer" has always been of my favorite books, glad you featured it in the opening.
This is not even close to the first game where the developers won't see everything. It's not f***ing special. Minecraft has almost the same exact procedural generated idea- HOWEVER. It actually bases its gameplay and even far better story around it. It put actual thought and effort into it. Same with Spelunky. These guys were all over the place and messy, just like the science fiction writers you mentioned. THe expansive spoke doesn't matter, all things are god damn beyond our imagination, but that's no excuse for shit execution. Hell games in the 90s already did this. 18 quadrillion, so? That's not even remotely all that interesting. You (that's right you!) can make 18 quadrillion random shit too, what matters is the content and design and also functionality, something No Mans Sky has massive problems with all. Even the story you described sounds mind bogglingly boring. And you fail to point out how talking to each of the creatures and the Atlas, the text boxes look incredibly cliche and mashed together. Minecraft does a much better job with this story idea, and beats them on all fronts. Hell even minecraft has the 4th wall boundary breaks at the end.
I like your take on the game.
I imagine modders will solve the conundrum of a minimally decent universe that cares about us. Hopefully by then it'll be $5 on steam and I'll have the wizard computer from Pluto required to run it.
I would love an update on this. I got the game 4 days ago and it seems a lot different now. I'm addicted to it.
6 GB?! Imagine how many quintillion worlds are in a 30 GB Call of Duty game!!
I can't begin to tell you how enlightening your reviews are.
Thank you for these videos Noah!
Amazing as always. Fantastic analysis. Keep up the great work
Wonderfully thoughtful and incisive criticism as always, Noah. Apologies if there is already somewhere you collate and post them, but I'd really appreciate a transcript or at least the working script for this to be able to quote with ease in a future work. Thanks.
I agree with the points of this video. The game itself is a work of art. Art is subjective. The detail in the designs, yhe variations in the flags or facial features of aliens, etc. That stuff should be commended as it's awesome. (Recent patches have added an echo effect when you walk in caves, which is awesome). What the game needs is a core skeletal game which would support it more. Trading with aliens in their ships on the fly, a search function to find your friend's discoveries, etc. I do hope that this universe is expanded upon (even if split into smaller games). Most games handle the inventory a lot better and are more believeable. A sequel would work well but right now they have a PR disaster and have to generate consumer goodwill to be able to move forward.
"cold math" is a myth.
see mandelbrot fractal, or almost any other.
math is at the core of aesthetics.
great video otherwise, I like your point of view.
31:15 so... space engine?
THANK YOU finally someone actually took an actual close look at this game, I was starting to feel I was going to have to make my own video or something lol
I believe the closest thing we have to universe in a bottle is elite dangerous, although it lacks planetary interaction, exploring with a ship suited for exploration and patience really is amazing,
Really good video! The main takeaway that I agreed with was the whole "Universe in a bottle" bit; There was no way that the game was going to be EVERYTHING that EVERYONE hoped for, but it's still impressive.
I also noticed the jump in editing quality in your most recent videos! Keep up the good work!
Big fan of your work and rewatching this. I wanted to ask if I could steal the "momentum and conviction" line. I'm writing a story and that line is really funny!
My personal idea is that you are a member of a league of explorers with the expectation of not making it back alive, each going to such a distant galaxy that it is a one way trip. Make it VERY clear that the player is likely to die during this. Your ship crash lands due to the warp or something. Permanent death is a feature with all of the data you collect stored until you die and the data is sent back when it does. When you begin again, you're another explorer and do the same thing over and over. Also do that whole inhospitable thing with algorithms you mentioned.
Let's all just stop to appreciate that Johnny Cash intro. Had to look up the song and listen to it 30 times in a row before I could move on.
I think this game hits the issue people say about Skyrim: wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle.
NMS is this taken even further: wide as the sky, deep as a single water molecule.
I think it kinda needed to be like Dwarf Fortress or FTL, where you are very likely to find random worlds where life is impossible.
They should have let the math get really off the walls. One of people's favorite things to find in minecraft are floating islands of dirt because they are rare and signs of the math going weird.
It can save people from the stress of FTL and DF by just check pointing you at space stations which could still be your gas station with attached convenience store.
Its interesting to watch your view of No Man's Sky vs that of Dan Olson at Folding Ideas. Whereas you focused on the nature of "the infinite" and the wonder and danger of exploration, he focused on loneliness, isolation, and the mundanity of always being a traveller, always just passing through.
excellent video as usual. keep up the good work!
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Great video.
Good talk!
Needlessly aggressive rebuttal.
I refuse to believe that FTL has randomized circumstances where winning isn't possible!
It's all about hardcore strategic and tactical thinking!
If it were only about luck, then it would ultimately be one big, complex slot machine that requires a guide just to pull the lever.
TheCrazyman5291 It does have situations where you cannot win. I have had situations where I run into 2 whole sectors with no shops and no ships I run into drop any fuel, so I'm stranded and my weapons haven't improved enough to take on the ensuing rebel fleet.
You have clearly just had better luck than others. That is what FTL is, ultimately. A test to see if you get just favorable enough RNG to upgrade your ship enough and get the right weapons to win. If you don't get the right weapons, don't have enough scrap to upgrade your ship enough, don't come across enough extra crew members etc. then you are ultimately fucked. I've had perfect strategy in some playthroughs but not enough resources to work with in order to get through the shields of an enemy ship in the first place to beat it.
Did you try milking each sector? Or did you run through a straight path? Were the sectors nebulas, because they have almost nothing in them. At least certain situations had to arise where there was choice, right? There's also the distress beacon, and if you know you're going to run out of fuel, don't just pick any beacon. If at least one of these factors of choice were in your game, then it potentially means that you made one wrong move that ended your game.
The point of the analogy was not to say that "FTL explicitly creates worlds you cannot win in". The point of the analogy was to say that FTL acknowledges and understands its playerbase, and the generation tools it has at its disposal enough to give those players unwinnable situations. No Man's Sky doesn't ever stray from its hand-holdy, casual feel. FTL, Planet Earth, and even moreso the uninhabitable worlds of the universe, do.
bery nice video. I think you captured the essence of this game very well!
Yeah, the biggest problem I've heard about the game is how repetitive it gets with its non-exploratory elements. That and the extremely small and counter-intuitive inventory system. You can have tiny amounts of twenty different elements, and they take up the same amount of space on your person as twenty stacks of the same element. Talk about annoying.
Johnny Cash's verse from Highwayman really was god damn perfect opener for this game.
excellent review, I am enamored by this game and know that with all of the patches it's only gonna become greater 😎
Extremely well put, you've earned yourself a sub.
Whatever your listening setup was doing to compress that johnny cash song sounded insane, like parallel compression